Volume I Part 27 (2/2)

[223] In a letter, dated Feb 9, 1857, of which she kept a copy To whom addressed does not appear

[224] _Notes_, sec iii p viii

But this was not the whole case Miss Nightingale carried further the principle, which in these days is perhaps at last co to be understood, that success in war depends upon preparation in peace ”You cannot improvise an Army,” says Lord Roberts ”You cannot improvise the sanitary care of an Arale If the medical service in the field were deficient, if the lessons of sanitary science were neglected in war hospitals, it was probable, she perceived, that there were like defects at houres, and was appalled at the verification which they supplied The idea had first occurred to her on istrar-General's office, at dinner with her friends Colonel and Mrs Tulloch Dr Farr had talked of ale resolved to compare them with the death-rate in British barracks She found that in the Are of twenty to thirty-five, the mortality was nearly double that which it was in civil life This was the case even in the Guards, who yet were select lives, the pick of the recruits ”With our present ae,” she wrote to Sir John McNeill (March 1, 1857), ”it is as criminal to have a mortality of 17, 19, and 20 per 1000 in the Line, Artillery, and Guards in England, when that of Civil life is only 11 per 1000, as it would be to take 1100 men per annum out upon Salisbury Plain and shoot the so much under control, none so dependent upon their eain (March 28): ”This disgraceful state of our Chatha lately,[225] is only one more symptom of a system which, in the Crimea, put to death 16,000 e scale, viz as to what given nuency of bad food and bad air” She saw the facts and figures with piercing clearness, and personal recollections gave intensity to her convictions

She had deep pity for the victims of preventable disease, and still deeper ad herois ever effaced from her mind what she had witnessed in this sort at Scutari and in the Crimea ”We hear with horror,” she wrote, ”of the loss of 400 men on board the _Birkenhead_ by carelessness at sea; but what should we feel if ere told that 1100 men are annually dooht be prevented? The men in the _Birkenhead_ went doith a cheer

So will our ht for us to the last with a cheer The more reason why all the means of health which Sanitary Science has put at our command, all the iven us, should be given them” Then she turned to the Crimea, described in the words of Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch[226] the sufferings and the endurance of the troops, and drew her moral: ”Upon those atched, week after week and e, this unalterable patience, sith to suffer and be still, it has lo-Saxon on the Crireater name than the Spartan at Therreater proof of what ht The traces of the naeneia reater sacrifice has been there accomplished by a 'handful' of brave men who defended that fatal position, even to the death And if Inkerman now bears a name like that of Therh which these men patiently and deliberately, and week after week, went, till they returned no reater than that of Inkerman Truly were the Sebastopol trenches, to our ni speranza, voi ch' entrate_ And yet these men would refuse to report themselves sick, lest they should throw more labour on their comrades They would draw their blankets over their heads and die without a word Well may it be said that there is hardly an exa and silent fortitude

But surely the blood of such e them, but to have ale, at least, responded through every fibre of her being She was resolved to be ”a saviour,” and to press hon

[225] See below, p 349

[226] _Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Supplies of the British Army_, pp 2, 3

[227] _Notes on the Are continues with soale had previously written, and which I have quoted as a th of her resolve was heightened by a sense of the responsibility which her opportunities laid upon her She had enjoyed peculiar facilities for observing the whole n She had been able to take the measure of many of the military and medical officials; she knehich were the ht be expected in the work of reform, and of most of such men she had the ear and the respect Her popular fame added to the authority hich her experience and her services invested her There were others who knew, or ht have known, the facts as well as she There were feho could exercise the sae the facts with the same disinterestedness She was not a politician She had no party to defend, no officials to shi+eld, no susceptibilities to consider She had nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing to fear She stood only for a cause; and, co every power ofher private notes of 1856 I find this: ”I stand at the altar of the ht their cause”

III

The opportunity was not long in coed in such laborious, but unexciting, tasks as settling accounts and clai the fro with hailstorms, as her sister called theetarians, Spiritualists, Sectaries, and other birds of the feather that swoop down upon conspicuous personages With distressed gentlewomen she was a favourite prey ”Can you find soldiers' orphans formy sisters?” ”Please find a place forto do not derogatory I a-letters were innu of these was taken over by her sister ”I think I can now repeat the for-letter at the shortest notice in the character of every individual, froer, and a ith six children” But here Lady Verney's lively pen suggests some little injustice Officers did occasionally write to Miss Nightingale, I find, to beg her ”vote and interest,” as it were; but of begging-letters proper, she told Mr Kinglake that there had never colake, Iof 1857, when her mind was full of the McNeill-Tulloch _affaire_ She failed to make him take her view of that controversy,[230] and her first impression of the historian-to-be of the Crimean War was that he would write a book h I have no doubt he is a good counsel,” she wrote,[231] ”he strikes me as a very bad historian” Three years later, she wrote in a siood conversation with Mr Kinglake I found hi upon the whole idea as a work of art and emotion, and upon me as one of the colours in the picture; upon the Chelsea Board as a safe (or rather an infallible) authority; upon McNeill and Tulloch as interlopers; upon figures (arithmetical) as worthless; upon assertion as proof He was utterly and _self-sufficiently_ in the dark as to all the real causes of the Crihten Sir G Brown hilan he has an enthusiasm which _I fully share_ but which entirely blinds Mr

Kinglake, who besides ca before the real distress, to the causes of that distress I put him in possession of some of the materials But I do not hope that he will, I am quite sure that he will not, make use of them[232]

[228] Her sister used to describe the disappointment of herself and her arden-party at Chatsworth The Duke of Devonshi+re was a great adale's work, and fors about it, which he presented to the Derby Free Library He presented Miss Nightingale with a silver owl, in recognition of her wisdom, and in memory of her pet (see above, p 160)

[229] _Invasion of the Crimea_, vol vi p 426 _n_

[230] See below, p 336

[231] In a letter to Sir John McNeill, May 3, 1857

[232] Letter to Edwin Chadwick, Oct 17, 1860 He had urged her to see Mr Kinglake with a view to indoctrinating hihtingale here rong Mr Kinglake made considerable use of her materials, and drew from them and from his personal ih on the point about which she was concerned, the McNeill-Tulloch _affaire_, he reale's deust 1856, there is a pleasant account in a letter from her sister[233]:--

She is better, I think, but I quite hate the sight of the post with its long official envelopes She will go on as long as she has strength doing everything which cannot be left without detriment to the work to which she has devoted her life I cannot conceive anything more beautiful than her frame of mind It is so calm, so cheerful, so simple The physical hardshi+ps one does not wonder at her forgetting to speak of; but the norance, the cruelty, the falsehood she has had to encounter--never seem to ruffle her for an instant (and never have done, Aunt Mai says) It is as if she dwelt in another at wicked can dis sadly and quietly as so so plainly the excuses for the wrong-doers, while the personal part never seems to come in, and there is such a charm about her perfect simplicity There is not the smallest particle of the s as ever, in the intervals of her great thought, and with as s of hoanization of thethrough hospital and out If you heard all the evidence we have had lately from doctors, chaplains and officers, you would not think I a that these dependedthe whole of these 21 months As to her indifference to praise, it is most extraordinary; she just passes on and does not heed it, as it co in its flood--papers, music, poetry, friends, letters, addresses

[233] To Miss Ellen Tollet from Lea Hurst

The addresses and presentations which she -men A case of Sheffield cutlery, presented by artisans in that city, was always treasured, and was the subject of a specific bequest in her will She was -men at Newcastle-on-Tyne ”My dear friends,” she wrote in the course of her reply (August 1856), ”the things that are deepest in our hearts are perhaps what it is most difficult to express 'She hath done what she could' These words I inscribed on the tomb of one of my best helpers when I left Scutari It has been ht of God, to do as she has done”

Presently there caale's life Her friend, Sir Jaust 23, 1856) begging her to stay during the following month at his home, Birk Hall, near Ballater The air of Scotland would be beneficial, he said, to her health; and there were other reasons The Court would shortly be htingale there Meanwhile Her Majesty knew of the present invitation; and there would be opportunity at Birk Hall for quiet and informal talk in addition to any ”coale heard in this letter a call hardly less important than that to the Crimea, two years before She had served with the Queen's army in the East Her services had received sympathetic support and approbation from the Queen and the Prince She was now to have full opportunities for bringing to their knowledge, in personal intercourse, what she had seen of the soldiers' sufferings, and for enlisting their support, if she could, in what she knew to be necessary for the prevention of such sufferings in the future She succeeded, as will presently appear; and she deserved her success by the thoroughness hich she prepared herself to make the best use of her opportunity